What are superhero campaigns about, anyhow?

Any

I've seen the accusation leveled that, because superhero stories are essentially about returning the world to the status quo, superhero stories are essentially about supporting “The Man” and they are therefore a bad thing.

Not surprisingly, I disagree, but it took me a long time to figure out why, and as usual someone else said it first and better, and I'm riding on their coattails.

Alas, I do not remember who said it first and better (when I find out, I'll try to amend this post), so let me say it later and worse:

Yes, superhero stories are power fantasies, but the central conceit of those fantasies is that the powerful use their powers to make the world a better place. Yes, Batman is clearly a white guy with old money, but he is that thing that's all too rare in the real world, the billionaire who cares. Superman dealt with slumlords and wife beaters in his early days, and I think it's telling that his principal foe is a wealthy capitalist.

Given that, it occurs to me that you can put that front and center in a role-playing campaign. Superhero stories and campaigns can be about righting a wrong. The adventures are less about “Oh no Dr. Badness has unleashed his BadMadCad ray on the world!” and more about dealing with the ills of the world as personified by various villains.

That sounds a bit preachy, and that's not what I mean. We're not talking about the Social Justice Warriors here, even if the characters deal with issues that social justice warriors deal with.

In retrospect, I dislike most of the Iron Age (“We're gritty! We have pain and awfulness up front!”) but one of the tropes that shows up a lot is that the heroes become heroes because they have suffered a social injustice.

That's not a bad reason....though it was frequently done in a ham-fisted way.

I see a couple of factors as important here.

• Addressing wrongs The characters are dealing with problems that are in some way representative of actual problems. This doesn't have to be resolving the problems (superheroes are essentially a serial form) but dealing with them, in the same way that the X-Men deal with hatred and mistrust. (Side note: in some ways, I see the decline of secret identities as being representative of a more accepting nature to LGBTQ+ lifestyles, that being super isn;t necessarily the issue...but that's not well-supported; I just now thought of it and might dcide I am wrong.)
• Costumes and codenames This one is perhaps less essential than the others, but the use of costumes and codenames actually lifts the characters to the symbolic level. It's not just Barbara dealing with the wife-beater, it's Batgirl.
• Doing it because it's right Look, there's an interesting conflict between the guy who stops crimes as a 9-to-5 job and the guy who does it just because it's right. It's kind of like the conflict that was introduced when Spidey and others deal with the Punisher...because the Punisher is a serial killer, and Spidey is not.

(There are probably others that I haven't thought of.)

Now, none of these are essential, but the more you don't do these, the more you get away from superheroes and the more you get toward people with powers.

And there is a difference, to my mind.

So doing a vigilante campaign is entirely possible and even a vigilante superhero campaign. Doing a weird mystic campaign is tougher, but I can imagine ways to pull it off. And, to my mind, the important thing is that it would feel like a superhero campaign.